Cowboys give Austin days off to save hamstrings

Cowboys wide receiver Miles Austin, given a choice, would have volunteered for more voluntary workouts.

But the team prefers he take more reps during the regular season than in the spring and early summer, which is why they forced him into some days off during OTAs and minicamp.

Austin has struggled with hamstring problems in recent years, and their hope is that time off now to rest them will help them avoid a repeat.

“It’s one of those things where you can’t not do it and then do it and tell the difference,” Austin said, via Carlos Mendez of the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. “But I feel good now.”

While it might take some stretching, or another cup of coffee, to safely wrap your mind around that quote, the point is simple. They’d rather have him later.

“I want to go,” he said, more plainly. “When coach says you can’t, you just kind of have to sit there and not go. But it’s tough for me, sometimes, just to watch the other guys going and not be out there, especially in this heat and knowing how it is to play wideout. You’re out there running. You get tired, and you want at least a few more bodies in there to take some of that load off.”

With Tony Romo missing all of the offseason practices recovering from surgery to remove a cyst in his back, it limits what a veteran such as Austin is missing.

Maybe this is a sign that these guys work out too much in the off-season. I understand that they get paid a lot of money, and that it is a full-time job, but the human body does need to rest sometimes. Pushing muscles and tendons for 12 months a year just seems to be begging for muscle fatigue and the kinds of injuries that we are seeing so early in the calendar year.

gordonray7777 says:Jun 20, 2013 10:35 AM

No worries all! With the signing of another receiver, I’m sure his hamstring problems will go away for good. This is the best treatment for ailing hamstrings.

It’s an interesting strategy. I guess if Austin doesn’t do any running in the off season, he likely won’t pull a ham but at some point he will have to run. And that’s when the trouble too often begins.